An Exchange
by Metronomeblue
Summary: post-3.08 speculation. In order to save Henry, Emma does something drastic and gives up something she shouldn't. The consequences aren't pretty. Captain Swan, two-shot.
1. Destruction

A/N: Okay, this unbeta'd and spur-of-the-moment, so there may be mistakes.  
Also, disclaimer: nobody I love has died on OUAT since Graham. I most certainly don't own it.

"I want to live," Emma says, and that's how it begins.

Henry is dying, of that there is no question. Someone without a heart cannot live long in a land fueled by belief, and Henry's life is running out.

"Could we replace his heart?" Charming asks, and everyone's mind jumps to the same conclusion.

"Could we take his heart back from Pan?" Neal asks, and Killian can see the murder in his eyes, and it turns his stomach, this shattered soul who used to be so small. Regina shakes her head, and there is steel and despair in her voice.

"Pan's infected it. It would kill him to get it back."

"Could he take someone else's, though?" Emma looks up, and she is no less determined than her opposite.

"Yes, I think so. Why? Who did you have in mind?"

"Me."

Killian spins to look at her, and she stares grimly back as assorted protests arise.

He doesn't ask why.

He knows.

"I want to live," Emma says, "but I want Henry to live more."

They say in Neverland you just have to believe. Maybe, maybe not. Killian wouldn't know, he was never very good at believing in things.

"I believe in you," he'd told her, and meant every word.

"You just have to believe," Regina told her, hand poised over Henry's chest, wide open and waiting like the vulture she was.

"I want to live," echoes in his head and he can't sleep, can't do much of anything but stand because he has to hold Neal back as he lunges forward.

"Emma!" as though he has any right to her choices, as though they're colored candies he can pluck from her hands and devour.

"Emma, there's gotta be another way!" There isn't, and Killian has seen one too many mothers cry over their lost sons to stop Emma from doing this, never mind the burning in his eyes and the grit in his throat.

"Do it quick," and the sand chokes up around_ I love you_ and_ Please don't_ and_ I should be the one_, because he shouldn't, and she wants to and he_ shouldn't_, he hardly knows the boy.

Emma's hand glows a bright, blinding blue, and she thrusts it into her chest, deep and painful. Killian winces, but he can't look away, and three hundred years smash into him like thunder. She is Emma but she is, in that moment, also Milah, and she's dying at a thousand miles an hour. His grip on Neal must be painful, it's so tight, but he can't let go, he can't let Emma down. Not now.

"Emma!" But Neal is still struggling, still fighting, still screaming his lungs bloody and burned, still voicing every selfish thought Killian is ashamed to have had. "Emma, please! You can't leave me!" Emma hands a brilliant crimson ball of light and muscle to Regina, who wordlessly takes it. Like it's her birthright, her golden bloody throne. She presses it almost gently into Henry's chest, and he takes his first deep breath since giving Pan his heart. "Emma, please, I love you!"

"Shut up!" Snow snaps, finally meeting her breaking point. "Just... stop." There are tear tracks down her face and red crescent-moons where she stopped herself from saving Emma. She abandoned her daughter once, twice.

Neal abandoned her forever, came strutting back as though she was his due, some golden trophy girl he could sweep off her feet and claim for his own.

"Quite," Killian grits out, pushing Neal away from him and wiping the tears from his eyes. David is knelt over Emma's body, sobs wracking his body in shudders. Snow is standing over them both, fists clenched tight and head hung low, bow forgotten and arrows useless against this martyr who was her daughter.

"And who the hell are you, huh?" Neal is angry, hurt. Killian is just tired, just broken. What he wouldn't give to change places with her father, to be able to cradle her in his arms and try in vain to piece her back together, to try to heal her as she had healed him and not be judged for the killer he nearly was.

"I want to live," she said, but she didn't want it enough to stay.

"Killian," she said, like she didn't know she said his name like a prayer, "Killian, you have to promise me you'll look after Henry."

Neal is yelling at him, words he can't understand because they don't come from her. Regina is holding Henry, shushing him as he cries for a mother he barely knew and a heart that wasn't his but now is. Killian sees the world in shattered glass, edges sharp and scraping against raw skin, his mouth full of silence like kaleidoscopes and the rainbows on oil.

"I can't," he breathes, "I can't."

Coward that he is, he pushes Neal back, stumbles, dizzy and dying into the wild.

He runs.

It doesn't work the way he'd hoped. He can still see her smile, smell her hair, feel her lips on his, her fingers in his hair.

"It was just a kiss," she scoffed, eyes frantic and mouth quivering with a long-guarded heart.

He accepted it because it was a lie.

He can't accept it anymore. He's seen her heart, seen her boundless love in her actions, in a death and a birth, and he knows now that it was never just a kiss. He's seen her bare her very soul to a man she both loves and despises, has seen her surprised and angry and sad and lying.

It scares Killian the most that only now has he seen her happy, to give her son life twice over and die in the making.

She died with a smile and a prayer, their eyes locked over the shoulders of the once-boy who tied them together with a fragile thread of anger and shame and lost love.

"Killian," she whispered, like she knew the depths of his heart and the width and breadth of his love for her.

"_Killian_," she whispered, dying.

He thinks maybe this time he won't live through it.

Oops.


	2. Restoration

A/N: So here's part two

~cs~

Neal wants to bury her in Neverland, and Killian realizes then that he doesn't love her, can't possibly if he's suggesting they_ leave her there._

"Haven't you already abandoned her enough?" He asks bitterly, and the glare Neal sends his way would burn ice if Killian actually cared.

Killian doesn't care about much, anymore.

"It's just more practical," Neal bites back, unbuckling Emma's belt. Killian's hook at his neck stops him, though.

"You won't be taking that," he says, dead calm and quiet. Neal seems to see something in his eyes he hadn't seen before and shoots a glance at Henry before setting Emma's sword down.

"It used to be mine," he tries to bargain.

"It's not anymore."

"Stop it," Snow hisses, buckling Emma's belt again. "Just leave her alone!" The tears in her eyes stop Killian from remarking on Neal's utter brilliance at doing that. Killian looks at Henry, as he is wont to do now. The boy sits, still and quiet, immobile and unblinking, as he's done since he first awakened. His eyes trace invisible lines, and Killian once again feels a weighted despair in his chest.

Another mother's death, another broken little boy.

He looks at Neal and scoffs at how the last one turned out.

Regina hasn't left Henry's side in the two days since Emma's death, as much for her sake as for his.

"It's time to go," Tinker Bell breaks in, glancing nervously over her shoulder for any sign of Peter.

"Just leave her," Neal echoes Snow's earlier words, and it's only the fact that Killian is currently cradling Emma's dead body that stops him from murdering his former friend.

"Never," he mutters, looking down on her still, silent face. Tink hears, and her face softens.

"Hook..."

"Come on," he says roughly, walking carefully over the rocks to his newly-repaired ship. "You'd better keep up, fairy."

"True love is the strongest magic in the world," Tink persists, trying to catch his eye as he gently, painstakingly lays Emma down in her bunk.

"It's not true love," he huffs, "never was."

"That's not true, though." He looks over his shoulder at her. "You kissed."

"It's true for her, Tink!" He rounds on her, hook brandished in her face, two days and three hundred years of ache and loss swelling over his carefullly constructed walls. "To me, it was a miracle. To her it was just a kiss."

"What if she lied?" Tink pushed.

"What if she didn't?" He repeated mockingly. He had been a terrible man before he met Emma. Now, without her, maybe he could just go back. Be numb, not feel a damn thing, not love, not fear, not pain.

"She did, and you _know_ it!" Tink was yelling back, her ever-present optimism still fighting his anger, his despair.

"Who did what who knows about?"

"Henry?" Killian asked, disbelief in every line of his face. The kid shrugs, as though all of this is normal, and walks over to Emma's body.

"She did love you, you know," Henry says casually, like it won't hit him like a ton of bricks, like it won't rip his heart out.

"What?" Is all Killian can choke out, wet sand dripping from between his teeth and gumming up his throat.

"I can feel it, in here," and Henry taps his heart, a bland smile on his face. "She really loved you. True love's kiss might work."

"But her heart's... in you." Tink realizes. "Nothing like that will work if she doesn't have the heart to love." Henry shrugs.

"Okay."

And that's when Killian realizes something is horribly wrong.

"How could this have gone wrong?" He asks Regina, later.

"What do you mean?" She's wary, they all are. So much has been risked, so much lost on this journey, and if something else has gone wrong Killian knows it may kill them all.

"I spoke with Henry," he begins.

"He talked to you?"

"Yes. He said... He said Emma loved me," and here Regina shot him a shrewd glance. "and when Tinker Bell realized true love's kiss wouldn't work unless she had her heart, he didn't seem to care that she was dead." Regina began to chew on her lip.

"Maybe their hearts weren't quite right," she muses.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that Henry had the heart of the Truest Believer. Now he has the heart of the Truest Skeptic."

"If we could make Emma believe, maybe Henry could, too," Killian says. Regina looks at him, an unguarded surprise there.

"You could make her believe," she says, and he thinks she believes it herself.

"Why me?"

"You could make her believe anything if you asked her to."

They're not gone yet, Killian is glad to note, still in the Land of Belief. Where one only has to hope for something to get it. Tinker Bell is fervently wishing fro Neal to drown.

Killian hopes for Emma back.

He hopes for Henry back, for safety and family and love.

He hopes for all hope to remain.

"Why are we here?" Henry asks, petulant. Killian isn't tired, even though he should be. he, Regina and the Charmings stayed up all night to figure their plan out, and he's been carrying Emma up a mountain slope, so there's that, too.

"Because I need to show you something," Killian tries, thinking it'll work better than just 'because'. He finds the hacked slice of air between dreamshade bushes and leads Henry safely through. The cave is large, airy, and the water is magical even in appearance as it trickles from one stone to another.

"What is this place?" Henry is fairly awestruck, even in his less energetic state.

"It's a place of restoration." Killian lays Emma down at the edge of the pool and sits beside her. Henry runs his hand through the pond, and laughs. "Pan's shadow is in this coconut, so don't knock it over." Henry gives the coconut a truly bizarre look.

"Pan'll come back here for his shadow, though, won't he?" Killian smiles.

"That's the plan."

They wait in amicable silence, Henry frolicking in the water and Killian sharpening his hook. All of a sudden, a sharp whistling fills the cave, and the dreamshade outside trembles.

"Well, boys," Pan bares his teeth in an approximation of a grin, "you have something of mine."

"As do you," Killian laughs, plunging a steady hook into Pan's lungs. He falters for a moment before Killian pulls Henry's heart out. As Regina had said, it was speckled with dark bruise-colored splotches and carved away, as though somebody had taken a knife to it.

"Catch," he calls to Henry, who does indeed catch it.

Henry looks at the foreign object before dipping it under the water. Killian wrenches Pan's neck sideways, tossing him from the cave, before offhandedly plucking Emma's heart from Henry's chest. Henry, who's marveling at his restored heart, merely lifts his arm for better access. Killian gingerly presses her heart to her skin, and he smiles widely as it's warmth began to spread and the heart melts into her chest. She breathes steadily, but she doesn't wake up.

Killian leans down, slowly, shyly, he presses his lips to hers. It is so very different from their last kiss, and he memorizes every detail. She breathes out into his mouth and one hand reaches up to weave into his hair. He smiles, joyful and honest.

Then, as Henry skips around the cave, getting reacclimated to his own heart, Emma's eyes shoot open. She lurches forward, only to find herself pressed into Killian's chest. He lays her down gently. She looks up at him gratefully, and his smile softens as he strokes his hand through her hair.

"Welcome back, love."

"Thanks."

She had wanted to live, she had wished it.

He granted her wish.

He lived through it.

~cs~

A/N: So this is just my way of compiling a few theories for episodes 3.09/3.10 and an excuse to write some angst.


End file.
